‘‘The perceptual bases of speaker identity’’ revisited
William D. Voiers · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2003
A series of experiments begun 40 years ago [W. D. Voiers, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 36, 1065–1073 (1964)] was concerned with identifying the perceived voice traits (PVTs) on which human recognition of voices depends. It culminated with the development of a voice taxonomy based on 20 PVTs and a set of highly reliable rating scales for classifying voices with respect to those PVTs. The development of a perceptual voice taxonomy was motivated by the need for a practical method of evaluating speaker recognizability in voice communication systems. The Diagnostic Speaker Recognition Test (DSRT) evaluates the effects of systems on speaker recognizability as reflected in changes in the inter-listener reliability of voice ratings on the 20 PVTs. The DSRT thus provides a qualitative, as well as quantitative, evaluation of the effects of a system on speaker recognizability. A fringe benefit of this project is PVT rating data for a sample of 680 voices. [Work partially supported by USAFRL.]